I heard a talk last year by George Whitesides, who has managed to shift the focus of his research from organic chemistry to soft robotics. He showed a couple of great videos of soft robots doing things that hard ones can’t.
Here’s one picking up an egg, for instance:
They also show that the robots can survive being hit with a hammer with no damage. Of course, that applies only to the soft parts of the robots, not to the hard mechanical pump that actuates them…
